Ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memo the day he resigned designed to sharply limit the Justice Department's abilities to enter into large-scale consent decrees with local and state governments. The move will almost certainly mean fewer Justice Department-led police reform efforts.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned Wednesday at President Donald Trump’s request, took a parting shot at Justice Department-led efforts to reform police departments.

The Justice Department on Thursday night released a memo Sessions signed before his departure, laying out new criteria that reform agreements -- known as consent decrees - must meet before they are filed. The criteria are much more stringent than guidelines followed under President Barack Obama’s administration, which favored large-scale, court-enforced efforts and frequently used them to weed out unconstitutional policing.

But just like Session’ rhetoric about consent decrees during his tenure as attorney general, the memo doesn’t appear to apply to Cleveland’s police reform efforts.

The new rules require top Justice Department officials to sign off on any agreement. The consent decrees must also spell out how long they will last - which the memo says generally should be no more than three years - and have “sunset” provisions that say they end when the government or department can show “durable” compliance with federal law. regardless of whether they fulfilled every specific requirement.

Any consent decree must also be “narrowly tailored” to remedy only the violations the Justice Department finds, rather than a sweeping reform agreement that could, in many ways, change the way a police department operates.

Sessions' memo states that the Justice Department “should exercise special caution before entering into a consent decree with a state or local governmental entity.”

The new rules likely mean the Justice Department will enter into fewer consent decrees than it did during the Obama era. The memo’s contents were not a surprise, as Sessions has long shown a disdain for large-scale efforts to reform police departments.

Sessions has criticized a consent decree the Justice Department reached with the city of Baltimore, and he opposes a proposed consent decree between the Illinois attorney general and Chicago’s police department.

Sessions resigned as attorney general on Wednesday, one day after the midterm elections. Trump named Matthew Whitaker, Sessions' chief of staff, as acting attorney general.

The city of Cleveland’s consent decree has been in place since 2015, and U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said in an interview last week that it is not going anywhere. The reform efforts have continued after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, including the implementation of key policies on use of force and crisis intervention.

Herdman, a Trump appointee, noted last week that the Cleveland consent decree is locked in and overseen by a federal judge.

"My boss, all the way up to the White House, my bosses talk about this administration upholding the rule of law," Herdman said in an Oct. 31 interview. "That includes agreements like the consent decree that the DOJ has entered as a party."

The city of Cleveland has a lot of work to complete, but the team monitoring the city’s progress under the agreement has shown cautious optimism for recent results. Instances of officers using force dropped in the first five months of 2018, as did injuries on the job. Crime also fell during the same time period.

Herdman has said he is happy with the progress the city of Cleveland has made thus far.